


Five Senses

by aces



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-22
Updated: 2010-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-06 13:54:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aces/pseuds/aces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world seemed to have suddenly gone blurry, the only clear object in it Jack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Senses

**1\. Sight**

_"Sight is the least sensual of all the senses. And we strain ourselves to see, see, see-everything, everything through the eye, in one mode..." ~ D.H. Lawrence_

It's a cliche, really. This irks him somewhat, because he considers himself more intelligent and clever than to think in truisms. And he considers his life interesting enough that he should be able to think in terms beyond your average, mundane, _boring_ cliche.

But there it is. Obvious as the difference between night and day, and once again he's back to the damned cliches. But by now he's beyond that mild irritation and merely lost in the thought, the realization itself.

He'd taken off his glasses, for whatever reason. Sometimes you do that, when you wear glasses all day, when you've worn glasses for so many years that one night by the time it's late enough and you've been up for two or three days anyway, you're so exhausted you can't even tell if they're on anymore or not...sometimes you just want things to be fuzzy. And sometimes you just want a change in perspective. And sometimes the damned things are just irritating the bridge of your nose or they're in the way of your falling tears. So you take them off, even if you are effectively blind without them.

He'd taken them off and had been writing in his journal steadily by the light of the campfire, safe. He always felt safe when they were all awake and sitting together in companionable silence in the short time between a rough dinner and sleep or guard duty on a planet nowhere near home. Teal'c was staring into the fire, perhaps meditating, and Sam was checking on the supplies and tents. And he'd felt somebody watching him and had looked up, not unduly concerned because his team was right there with him.

Jack is fuzzy in that moment, a blur of grey and brown and green, but he can still feel Jack's gaze patiently focused on him. He half-smiles in mild confusion and inquiry and can't tell if there's a change of expression in response on Jack's face or not because his companion is too blurry. So he puts his glasses back on.

He looks up again once he has done this and blinks, startled. The sudden focus and clarity is startling, a cold shock that slithers its way down his back and into his very toes, a tingle as if frozen limbs are coming back to life in a strange sort of numb agony. Jack is still focused on him with that strange endurance, unblinking, apparently blindly unnoticing of the realization running through Daniel; though to Daniel it feels like he should be a blinking neon sign, there for the entire world to see. He stares back, uncomprehending. Jack smiles slightly and breaks away when a rustle indicates Sam coming back.

He is shaken, muddled, and looks down at his journal again, unsure what to do with it now. What had he been doing with it before? What was he doing with anything? The world seemed to have suddenly gone blurry, the only clear object in it Jack.

He glances up again surreptitiously, watching as Jack converses easily with Sam, making her grin. Jack is no longer fuzzy, a blur of grey and brown and green. Jack is sharp, outlined in black, shaded in silver, highlighted in umber, the colour of his eyes. Firelight flickers, throwing him up in light sometimes, leaving him in darkness others, but still it seems that the rest of the world has fazed out until Jack is the only solid, tangible thing for Daniel to latch onto.

Jack looks away from Sam, meeting his gaze, and smiles in some blend of exasperation and concealed affection. "Go to bed, Daniel," he says, "I have first watch anyway." He turns back to Sam. "You too, Carter." She nods, smiles, tells the colonel good night, walks past Daniel with a gentle, warm touch on his shoulder that still seems somehow weak, unreal, as if he were out of phase with the rest of the world. He glances over as she ducks into her tent, then looks back at Jack.

"Good night, Daniel," the colonel says pointedly, and he nods dumbly, gathering up his journal and pen. He touches his face absently, because he's having one of those fuzzy moments when he's not sure if his glasses are on or not, and is vaguely surprised to find them there. So surprised, in fact, that he turns back to Jack to share this information with the other man. And Jack is looking right up at him, and abruptly he turns away again, muttering his own good night as he hurries for the tent. He feels Jack's gaze follow him, but he doesn't turn to look.

He sits down on the ground, dropping the journal and pen. He quickly slips the glasses off, setting them safely aside, and rubs at the bridge of his nose in mild irritation. He had been pleasantly exhausted, looking forward to getting some quality sleep on an alien planet after finishing up his journal writing, but now he is wide awake and unnerved and restless for it.

He lies down anyway and stares at the top of the tent. It doesn't matter now that his vision is fuzzy, not when there's nothing to look at in here anyway, and he has to resist the urge to duck his head outside and look around for Jack, see if Jack would still be as blindingly _there_ as he had suddenly become when Daniel slipped on his glasses. So he firmly keeps himself lying down, hands folded on his stomach, searching vainly for a trigger to sleep.

And he finds that he is irritated by the fact that it took his slipping on his glasses for Jack to pull into sudden and obvious focus for him. He's never lived his life by cliches before now, after all.

**2\. Sound**

_"As, in Sense, that which is really within us, is (as I have said before) only Motion, caused by the action of external objects, but in appearance; to the Sight, Light and Color; to the Ear, Sound...." ~Thomas Hobbes_

"_I close my eyes   
and reach to hold   
I seek,   
and you shall find..._"

"What?"

He looks up fuzzily, eyes blurring and watering from the shift in focus. He had been thoroughly lost in the writing on the wall of the dimmed baked-brick building, dim voices whispering the words to him in enticing broken phrases down the years, and he had been so lost in the past he hadn't heard the other man duck inside. "What?"

"What were you just muttering to yourself?" Jack clarifies, in a tone of voice that is strangely difficult for Daniel to decode. That's been happening too much lately, he thinks uncomfortably. Jack's hand is resting on his gun, and he is looking around at the minute squiggles covering all the walls with a mild frown of disinterested puzzlement-what would be a contradiction in anybody else, and yet Jack somehow always manages to pull it off.

Daniel gestures absently at the section of far wall he was standing in front of. "Translating," he says briefly and turns back fully, pushing his glasses up as he does so and leaning down slightly to be at eye-level with the section he is at the moment attempting to decipher. His neck is already beginning to ache from the position he has been forcing it into.

"Translating what?"

"It's a poem," is the vague reply. "At least, I think it is..."

Jack snorts, an explosive sound like a gunshot in the startled, gentle silence of the room. "Poetry on _walls_? What will they think of next?" he mutters just loudly enough for Daniel to hear him. Daniel decides to coolly disregard the aside, though the temptation to ask Jack if he's read any good bathroom stalls at the SGC lately is strong. He hears the older man moving around the room behind him and tries to ignore the soft scuffing sounds of shuffling, wandering feet, but his ears keep sharpening, pulling back to locate the sound, place where Jack is in the room. He knows the exact moment when Jack pauses close behind him, close enough that the colonel's breathing is almost overwhelming his ears.

"You gonna be done soon?" Jack asks presently, and Daniel is mildly relieved at the break in the spreading silence. Even Jack's breathing had quieted, and Daniel's own heart seemed to have paused for long moments between beats, as if time were slowing down in that little building that Daniel was for the moment tentatively labeling as the local area of worship or study-someplace important and central to the community in any case. His eyes are unfocused, blurry; he hasn't seen any words on the wall since Jack entered the room, has heard none of the whispering friendly voices translating helpfully over his shoulder.

"Why?" Daniel asks, trying not to sound disagreeable. He hates to be distracted while he works. He dislikes that Jack distracts him.

"'Cause if you hadn't noticed, it's getting kinda dark in here," is the easy, smartass answer. Beautiful normality; Daniel can breathe again, and time speeds up to its normal pace again, and his heart works the way it's supposed to again, and the building is filled again with the normal sounds of life, even if it is life on an alien planet. "And we're all ready for dinner. We thought you might want to join us."

"Right." Daniel blinks at the wall, chewing his lip in thought. "I'll...be right out, then."

Jack doesn't move behind him, not even a shuffle of his feet or a clearing of his throat. Only his breathing. "Was there something else?" Daniel asks, finding a brush in one of his pockets where he'd stuck it earlier and reaching out to carefully brush at the carved strokes in the wall.

"Better hurry," Jack says after another pause, and Daniel hears the other man shift his weight, as if he were finally turning away. "Teal'c'll eat all the mac and cheese."

"Chicken, you mean," is the automatic reply.

"Whatever," Jack's voice drifts back to him as the colonel wanders out of the building. Daniel hears his steps fade out and still some indefinable presence of Jack O'Neill lingers for a while behind him, as if Jack were still breathing softly over his shoulder, scuffing his shoes, cracking his knees.

Daniel stares at the wall in front of him, gaze unfocused and blurry. He curses irritably and swings around, picking up his notebook before stalking out of the room.

***

Usually Daniel finds these nights peaceful, soothing, relaxing. Usually he likes sprawling out in front of a fire with his friends surrounding him while he writes in his journal or simply listens to the world around him. It's such a nice change from the frantic, fraught missions they usually go on, with no time for quiet moments like these.

Tonight he stares at his opened journal, which includes the rough copies he'd made of some of the writings on that far wall-he'd filmed everything as well, for more accurate copying later, but he always feels somehow more archaeological using pen and paper and his own eye. And somehow it makes it more real to be copying from the original source, rather than going through the video tape and computer and printer.

Teal'c is patrolling-no real reason or necessity, perhaps, but it is a lovely night-and Sam is washing up at a stream nearby while she has the chance. Jack is sitting across from him, staring into the fire expressionlessly. Daniel keeps glancing up at him, sometimes over his glasses, sometimes through the lenses, trying to decide if there is any difference between the two perspectives and afraid there isn't.

He looks back down at his journal and hisses in frustration, throwing his pen down on the page, knowing that it is capped and therefore can't smudge the careful lettering he'd done earlier that day. It makes an oddly loud thudding noise when it hits the paper and rolls off to the ground, where he snatches it back before it can roll too close to the fire. He runs a hand through his hair and winces at the grimy, greasy feel. At least he hadn't put gel in before going through the gate a couple days ago. Perhaps when Sam is done he can slip down to the stream himself.

"What's up?" the voice reminds Daniel he isn't alone, and he looks up at his companion. Jack is watching him, still with an unreadable expression on his face. Daniel blinks and looks down again.

"Can't concentrate," he says abruptly and leaves it at that.

Jack scoots closer so that he's planted next to Daniel's journal, dangerously close to one of Daniel's hands. He cranes his neck to frown down at the squiggles in the younger man's book. "Still working on that? Why don't you give it a rest?" The words should have been spoken in something blunt, disinterested, aggravated and aggravating, but for once Jack's voice is gentle, quiet, perhaps even almost concerned.

Daniel carefully pulls his hands in under his body, as naturally as possible so Jack won't notice. "Can't," he replies and removes a hand from under him to rub at his face.

Jack snorts softly, a gentler sound than the one before in the structure. "I think you should," he says, and Daniel could happily smack him at that point, even if his voice still isn't quite right. "You're not getting anywhere, are you?"

The linguist shakes his head, unwilling to speak.

The colonel pauses. "Is that what you were looking at this afternoon?"

Daniel looks up at him over his glasses, frowning. Once he would have had to push bangs out of the way to get a proper look at Jack from this angle. Once.

"When I came in," Jack goes on. "And made you come to dinner."

"Oh," is the articulate response. Daniel grimaces wryly at himself. Definitely not firing on all cylinders tonight. Today. "Yes."

"Poetry, huh."

"Yep."

"Cool."

"You surprise me."

"Yeah? Why?"

"You've never seemed the poetic sort."

"I have my moments," Jack says lightly, making Daniel frown up at him curiously and wonder about those moments. "How'd you translate that? _I close my eyes_..."

"_I close my eyes / and reach out to hold / I seek / and you shall find_," he recites tiredly. "Well, something like that anyway. Literal translation is always a bit of a bastard..."

Jack nods thoughtfully. "It's-pretty."

Daniel raises his eyebrows and blinks up at his friend. "Pretty?"

Jack looks defensive. "Yeah," he says. "Pretty. I think I like it."

Half Daniel's mouth quirks upward, and he glances down quickly at his journal again. "I like it too," he says, unsure why he says it, unsure why he's unsure.

Jack pats his head, only it's rougher than that, and stands up. "Get some sleep, Daniel," he says. "Maybe you'll be able to concentrate in the morning."

Daniel doesn't watch, only listens as Jack heads for his tent. He keeps his eyes closed for a long time, listening to the wind, and Teal'c's stolid, slow, content footsteps, and the gentle, faraway splash and off-key singing of Sam. He can hear nothing from the tent. Not even breathing.

He sighs, opening his eyes and looking down again at the opened page in front of him. "I close my eyes..." he whispers.

**3\. Touch**

_"But the touch or company of any man whatsoever stirreth up their heat, which in their solitude was hushed and quiet, and lay as cinders raked up in ashes." ~Montaigne_

"Sometimes, Daniel," Jack says, "you're surprisingly predictable."

Daniel blinks and looks up from his journal to frown fuzzily at the older man sitting across the room from him. Jack is silhouetted by shadow and flickering amber light from the small fire they have going in the pit in the middle of the room. Outside, thunder cracks, sending a shiver along Daniel's body and giving him a bit more time to consider his response.

"Predictable?" he says after the thunder grumbles away reluctantly.

"Yeah," Jack says. He is leaning up against the wall, probably smudging valuable historical evidence of the culture that had lived in and used this home, but Daniel doesn't have the energy to snap at the colonel. "Predictable."

The only response Daniel can come up with to that at first is to continue blinking as a means of stalling until he can think of something better. When nothing better presents itself, he gently sets his journal aside and asks, "How so?"

Jack shrugs one shoulder, looking away from his friend to stare into the fire. His gun is resting in his lap, one hand slung over it, propped up by it, and Daniel imagines the feel of Jack's heat sinking into the gun, warming its cold metal. Teal'c and Sam are waiting for them at the other settlement, a few klicks from here. He had persuaded Jack early that morning to explore, and they'd gotten caught in this storm, forcing them to take shelter in one of the better-preserved community buildings.

"You're always writing in that journal," Jack says. "Or you're always drinking coffee."

"You're always carrying that gun around," Daniel replies reasonably, setting his hands folded politely in his lap. He's sitting nearer the fire than Jack, cross-legged despite the discomfort of that position. Standard issue US Air Force combat boots dig into the sides of his knees and muddy his already-soaked trousers, and he has a feeling this is how Jack's knees feel on a regular basis. "We are our own cliches, apparently."

Jack shrugs again, not bothering with more of an answer. Jack had dragged him into this building almost two hours ago, when Daniel would have stayed out in the pouring rain with his face upturned and his clothes and hair drenched, intoxicated by the sensation of rain dripping down his face, soaking into his clothes, making him cold and clammy and yet strangely exhilarated. Jack had been tense the entire trek over and during Daniel's exploration, muttering about a storm coming. Daniel had rejoiced at the release when the first growl of thunder came. Jack had, it seemed, only become tenser. He'd snapped at Daniel, grabbing his soggy shirt and pulling him into the nearest building. Daniel couldn't understand why. It was only rain.

But now he is cold and shivery, though the skin burns painfully where Jack had grabbed him through his shirt, and sitting as close to the fire they'd built as he can without getting burnt by sparks like little snapping, irritable dragons. Perhaps, he thinks wryly to himself, that's why Jack had been so aggravated with him for standing in the storm when anybody with a modicum of sense would have run inside. He'll laugh at me if I start sniffling...

He hears a long rumble of thunder like thousands of gunshots and shivers again. It's such an...unhappy sound. A simplistic descriptive, perhaps, but appropriate.

"Cold?" Jack asks, and Daniel wonders that the colonel can see an infinitesimal shiver from all the way over there. But perhaps his vision is overly-acute too. It isn't a thought Daniel wants to pursue.

"Yes, but I was shivering more at the thunder than the cold," Daniel answers honestly. "Are you?"

"Shivering? Or cold?"

"Either," Daniel says patiently, used to this game. Predictable indeed.

"Nah," Jack says lightly and shifts position. Daniel hears the scrape of fabric against baked-brick wall and almost shivers again at the tactile sensation the simple, soft sound produces. He is too sensitive these days, literally.

He glances over surreptitiously and sees that Jack has closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall, arm falling from his gun to rest at his side loosely. Daniel is surprised by how relaxed Jack looks. Jack, who never truly relaxes on an alien planet-who never seems to relax truly at all. Even Daniel doesn't think he has that much continual nervous tension in himself. The colonel's hair is gray, his face thin and sharply defined and lined by the fire. The rest of the room is blurring completely out of focus, and he fancies he can hear Jack's breathing even from here.

Daniel squeezes his eyes shut quickly, afraid to open them again in case Jack remains so sharply defined, and tries hard not to hear a single thing outside his own body. He wishes he could lean back against a wall and let the sounds of the storm outside wash over him, lull him into peace, into the release he'd found so transiently with that first burst of thunder, into the peace Jack has somehow apparently and miraculously found now. But he is sitting nowhere near the wall, and it would be too far away from the fire which is slowly bringing his body back into sluggish life, though even the flames cannot affect that particular bit of skin that Jack touched. His back aches from the lack of support for so long. He ignores it.

"I think it's letting up," Jack says a half-hour or so later. They had spent the intervening time in quiet companionship; Jack might almost have been dozing, though Daniel is sure he hadn't been, while Daniel had gone back to his journal. Now the colonel is peering out the doorway. "It's just a light drizzle now." He turns back to his companion, haloed by a grey sunlight from behind and lit up in shadow by the fire in front. "Wanna make a run for it?"

Daniel repacks his journal and slings his pack over his shoulders. "Sounds like a good idea," he says without looking at the colonel, biting his lip, feeling his teeth scrape across the sensitive tissue. "Sam and Teal'c'll be worried."

"They'll know we took cover," Jack says without concern as they start traipsing through mud and grass. "Well, they'll know I shoved your ass out of the storm, anyway. Sometimes, Daniel, you really do make me wonder if you were born with any common sense."

"I like storms," Daniel says simply. "You don't get them often in the desert, you know."

"I hate storms," Jack grumbles, marching along beside the linguist. "They make my scalp itch."

"Buy better shampoo," Daniel says ironically.

Jack snorts, and they walk the rest of the way in near silence. Daniel tries to enjoy the feel of the drizzle on his body, but it only irks whenever rain trickles into his hair and runs down his forehead.

They make it back without further mishap, and Sam smiles and Teal'c bows his head in greeting. And they all troop inside the building in which the other two team members had stored their things during the storm to discuss what they will do next. The sun is already coming out, making the ground steam and giving the air a muggy, close feel, almost suffocating Daniel. He pauses outside for a moment and closes his eyes, remembering the feel of pouring rain streaming down his upturned face, the burning scrape of Jack's fingertips against his skin through his shirt.

He only wishes the release had lasted a little longer.

**4\. Smell**

_"My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson_

He wakes suddenly, silently, eyes flying open to stare up. He's in the tent on the planet, and there's no apparent reason why he should have woken. He sees nothing unusual, hears nothing unusual, feels nothing unusual.

Daniel rolls over to his side, searching out his friend. Jack is not hard to find; the tent is not that large, and his gaze, his body, has never had any trouble pinning down Jack's location.

But the colonel is still asleep, unaware of Daniel's scrutiny, and obviously undisturbed by whatever has woken Daniel. The archaeologist rolls onto his back again, staring up at the canvas ceiling again, trying to fall back to sleep. It is difficult.

He wakes up in the morning to find Jack's rolled closer to him in the short night; Jack's head is practically touching Daniel's shoulder. The colonel smells of pine trees, freshly cut wood, hot summer afternoons under the sun by a lake. Daniel catches his breath and sits up carefully, not wishing to disturb his friend.

He watches Jack sleep for a while, the even rise and fall of his chest, the lack of worry lines burrowing into his forehead. He reaches out hesitantly to run a light hand over Jack's bristle, but pulls back, afraid. Finally he slips out of the tent and heads for the stream to clean up.

He smells like BO and musty buildings that hadn't been opened in centuries until he got to them, when usually he knows he smells like sand and dry, relentless sun. Daniel smiles to himself wryly and quickly pulls off his clothes, sliding into the startlingly cold water so that by the time his body thinks to feel shocked it's already become accustomed to the extreme temperature change.

He closes his eyes, breathing in deeply the unique scent of the planet. He knows that the sense of smell is one of the most powerful memory recalls, and yet it is never his sense of smell that makes him feel homesick when on a different planet. There is nothing here, on these other worlds, that smells like home, to remind him of the desert or Colorado or Aybdos or a particular city on Earth. Only other things can make him homesick.

He gasps, eyes flying open, when he hears someone approaching from behind.

"Just me," Jack calls, and then he's in the water with Daniel, wading toward him, and Daniel is overpowered by the scent of sun-warmed lakes filled with nonexistent fish. He almost gags but manages to control himself.

"Sleep well?" Jack is asking as he busily splashes himself with water and dunks his head under, coming back up quickly and shaking his head fiercely. Daniel doesn't even mind getting hit by water droplets like pricks from dozens of needles; it focuses his mind, helps him keep track of where he is, who he is, what he can and cannot do.

"Uh...yes," Daniel says, watching Jack dubiously. "You?" he adds tentatively, heart suddenly pounding. Did Jack know he moved in his sleep? Does he want Jack to know? And why is he acting like such an idiot?

Daniel suddenly finds scrubbing his own body down vitally important. "Yeah," Jack says, and Daniel is firmly not watching him while he washes, "surprisingly. Hell, you actually got up before me for once."

The archaeologist manages a flicker of a half-smile and concentrates on scrubbing his face.

Jack touches him lightly on the shoulder. He does not flinch, though the touch lights up his entire body, and the scent of sweat and gunpowder and evergreen trees is strangely addictive. "You okay?" the colonel asks. "You're awfully quiet."

Daniel snorts. "I haven't had coffee yet," he answers and looks up to meet Jack's eye reluctantly. But Jack's eyes are laughing quietly, and it makes Daniel relax a little, makes him hope that perhaps there is still control for him, or that control isn't even necessary. It's _Jack_.

"Then don't take too long in here," he advises as he turns and heads for the bank and his clothes. "Don't want to have to get Teal'c to pull you out of the water."

Daniel doesn't watch his friend get dressed, doesn't listen to the colonel's steps crunching through the grass back to camp, doesn't recall the light pressure of Jack's fingertips on his shoulder. He closes his eyes and breathes in the remembered scent of Earth trees, Earth water, Earth life, and suddenly, strangely, he finds himself homesick.

**5\. Taste**

_"'I'd like to taste,' he said, 'the inside of your mouth. God, how I'd like to be a goblin-sized Gulliver and explore that cave.'" ~Vladimir Nabokov_

Once again, they are alone at the campfire. Daniel smiles tensely to himself at the thought and wraps his hands more securely around his mug. He drinks the coffee with appropriate reverence, sipping it with luxurious slowness. It isn't even the good stuff, but it is the last of his ration and therefore due at least some respect.

It is also their last night on the planet; tomorrow morning they will pack up quickly and head back to the Gate, putting behind them another successful mission, a peaceful mission for once. But Daniel doesn't feel very peaceful; he is restless, shifting constantly in front of the fire, trying to warm himself up through the coffee.

It's bitter, grit grinding in his teeth. He finds it sacrilegious Sam's tendency to put sugar in, Jack's liking occasionally for cream. Condiments ruin the point of coffee's taste, the sharp acidic bite. Daniel is a purist.

Teal'c is in his own tent, as is Sam, either sleeping or meditating or whatever else they might do. Jack is technically on watch, though the gun lies not-quite-forgotten in his lap as his eyes watch the flames in front of him. Daniel doesn't know why he's keeping Jack company, doesn't know why he's drinking this coffee that will keep him even more awake and restless than usual, but he knows that he doesn't want to go to bed, he doesn't want to leave this planet yet, and he doesn't want to leave Jack out here alone.

The planet feels like a safe haven after so many days here, after so many tiny revelations falling over quietly like dominoes in Daniel's head. He is afraid that when they get back to Earth none of this will matter, none of it will be true, it will all have been some trick of this world.

He tastes the coffee again, in order to get rid of the taste of the rations they'd had for supper. It's dark, this liquid, it tastes black, and Daniel shakes his own head at his fanciful thoughts.

"Shouldn't you be going to bed, Daniel?" Jack asks quietly after a long while of silence. "We've got an early morning."

Daniel shrugs one shoulder and sips his coffee.

"And you really shouldn't be drinking that coffee; you should be saving it for tomorrow morning when you _know_ you'll be cranky and pissy 'cause you don't have any coffee left, and then one of us will take pity on you-or on the rest of us for having to put up with your whining-and give you some of his ration-"

Daniel thinks about what would happen if he kissed Jack into shutting up and is on the verge of getting up and walking around the fire to experiment before he pulls back from himself, almost mortified. Almost. That reaction in itself is almost more intriguing than the first. Almost.

"Daniel?" He looks up immediately into the colonel's eyes, and Jack is looking across at him in affectionate irritation. "Go to bed."

Daniel shakes his head and sips his coffee.

Jack blows out a deep breath through his nose, carefully setting his gun down next to him on the ground before standing up, brushing off his trousers, and walking around the fire. Daniel blinks up at him, heart jumping out of his chest into throat, and clutches onto his mug for strength.

Jack sprawls onto the ground next to his friend, putting his hands under his head as he gazes up at the stars. "So tell me what's wrong," he says tiredly, as if this is an old game between them, which it probably is.

"Nothing's wrong," Daniel answers, and this too is no doubt part of the same game.

Jack's eyes flick to Daniel's face before settling again on the sky. "Suuuuure," he says. Daniel wiggles his eyebrows and looks confused or put out or irritated, depending on one's interpretation, as is expected of him in this game. "C'mon, Daniel, you've been acting weird almost the whole time we've been on this planet."

"And you haven't?" Daniel counters quickly.

Jack shrugs one shoulder, not exactly a denial. "You've been distracted," and his voice is once again that odd, quiet, gentle tone, and the game changes instantly, into one that Daniel doesn't even know the rules for. "You've hardly said anything."

Daniel looks away from the person lying down next to him, staring into the fire instead. "The culture that lived here is very interesting," he says eventually.

Jack snorts, sitting up and wincing when some part of his body protests the sudden burst of energy. Daniel can almost feel the fabric of Jack's jacket in his caress, can almost hear Jack breathing against him, can almost scent his Minnesota cabin, and the vision is so real he catches his breath. "So interesting you have next to nothing to say about them," the colonel is retorting, and Daniel tells himself to pay attention. "What's up? Really."

Daniel has no answer for that, not one he's willing to give, in any case. "What's up with you?" he asks instead, hesitantly. "You really _have_ been acting...out of character, Jack."

It's Jack's turn to stare into the fire, and his face is still unreadable, and Daniel really wishes he could define this new expression, interpret it, translate it. "I haven't been feeling very in-character."

Daniel huffs softly. "Neither have I, quite frankly," he says.

Jack turns his head, giving Daniel a long look, and his face and hair are lit in flame. He's frowning thoughtfully, and for some reason this amuses the archaeologist. "Have you ever had a-an epiphany?"

Daniel frowns himself and nods. "One or two," he says.

Jack nods and turns back to the fire. "I thought so," he says. "You seem the type."

A wry twist of his mouth, Daniel sets his now-empty coffee mug down. "Thanks. I think."

"It's just-" bursts out of Jack almost before Daniel finishes speaking, and then he subsides again.

"It's just what?" Daniel asks quietly.

Jack looks at him over his shoulder again, and now it's Daniel's turn to smile a little, an enigmatic expression of his own. Jack shifts uncomfortably and darts his glance back to the fire, as if it were easier to talk to it than to Daniel. "I think I had an epiphany on this planet," Jack mumbles to the hot flames.

"Yes?" Daniel says, keeping his voice even, soft, uninflected.

Jack nods and looks unhappy. Daniel reaches out, hesitates, touches Jack's shoulder. Jack tenses, immediately releases, beneath the contact, and the archaeologist thinks he hears the colonel sigh out deeply. "What about?"

Jack looks back at him slowly, eyes flickering once, twice, to the fingertips brushing against his jacket. "You," he says simply and blinks once before gazing steadily at Daniel.

Daniel's hand drops to his side limply, and he holds Jack's eyes. "Oh," he says and leaves it at that.

Jack nods to himself and scoots back a little, so that he's sitting right next to Daniel, shoulder almost but not quite touching shoulder, bringing his knees up to his body. Daniel doesn't move, though his body slowly relaxes, settling into itself. "You?" Jack asks.

"Not an epiphany," Daniel says, and frowns. "Not exactly. More of a...culmination. Resolution. Realization."

One half of Jack's mouth curves irrepressibly upward, and Daniel slowly grins in turn. And then Jack is turning to face him, putting a hand to Daniel's cheek, putting his lips against Daniel's.

Daniel breathes in the taste of Jack, and he's coffee and chocolate and those awful MREs and faded old cigarette smoke and so much more, and finally Daniel feels the fabric of Jack's jacket, hears him breathing against him, smells the Minnesota cabin. He thinks about opening his eyes and looking at Jack both with and without his glasses, but he doesn't bother. It doesn't matter if he's blurry or right in focus when they're this close.


End file.
